--- David Comley <david_comley_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> >When and where is the Hamvention?
>
> Dayton, OH, and it's the weekend after next (Fri 16th
> May through Sunday). The focus is ham radio equipment
> but there was also a lot of computer gear and test
> equipment last time I was there.
There's always lots of everything there (except what you
are looking for ;-) Several test equipment vendors show
up with bakery rack after bakery rack full of HP and Tektronix
gear - other vendors sell box after box of Tek manuals. There's
lots of older computer _and_ radio gear, but there's a definite
window of opportunity in terms of age - kinda like the stuff you
see at the thrift store change over time. Once, they were
loaded with Commodore and Atari gear. Much less now. It's a
case of identifying what's just become obsolete in the business
world and expecting to see piles of _that_.
When I first went (1982), DEC equipment was everywhere, PeeCee
equipment was virtually nowhere, and there was plenty of people
selling Commodore VIC-20s and CW gear and other things of that
vintage. Given what I've been seeing at the Ohio State surplus,
I'm expecting a bumper crop of pre-G3 PowerMac gear - stuff that
won't run OS X at all and won't go much past MacOS 8.6 without
a fight. There should also be plenty of PeeCee parts from
machines that shouldn't run NT/2000/XP on a dare.
There will also be radio vendors, antenna vendors, battery vendors,
etc. Mendelsson's will probably have their large tent with pallets
of slightly-crushed UPSes, ammo cans and other surplussy things.
I go, but I buy less and less each year - I'm not in it for the
mainstream stuff - for that, I go to the ComputerFest (same venue,
but all indoors) in March and August.
-ethan
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Received on Tue May 06 2003 - 13:10:00 BST